It sounds attractive, but it's all going to depend on the pricing of the service.

Channel24 reports: (Partial quote - read the full article here)

2011-05-09 15:51
by Thinus Ferreira

Cape Town - South African TV viewers will be able to order and watch newly released movies and TV series straight from the couch when SouthTel launches a true video-on-demand (VOD) service called VOD:TV.

With VOD:TV – for which subscribers will have to buy a decoder and install a satellite dish – viewers will be able to watch movies in the window before they become available on pay TV, as well as episodes and seasons of TV series, immediately. "SouthTel's VOD:TV will definitely be cheaper than pay TV," says Oscar Dube, SouthTel CEO and funder.

SouthTel will launch VOD:TV – a personal digital video store in the home – in September in South Africa as well as three other SADC countries. Subscribers will have to buy a VOD:TV decoder (which comes with a satellite dish and installation like normal pay TV) and then pay per movie, TV episode or TV season "ordered".

Whatever is ordered from a vast catalogue can then be watched immediately. Similar to the VOD service when watching movies in hotel rooms, viewers will be able to "purchase" the right to watch a season of a TV show for instance within a certain period of time.


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Serious, serious competition for DSTV... maybe then MonoChoice will catch a wake up and stop forcing inflexible "bouquets" down people's throats and allow people to choose the channels they want, and pay only for those chanels.

Couldn't agree with you more Jason. I despise the way MonChoice basically forces you to fork out for their top-end 'Premium'' service to get to the couple of channels you are really interested in, while stuffing the rest of the 'boquet' with crap or channels I'm simply not interested in.

According to the article MultiChoice has been working on a similar project of it's own, but if VOD:TV gets to market first it's going to give them a huge competitive advantage. Add to that the number of disillusioned DSTV subscribers and VOD:TV may just be on to a winner here. Competition is a wonderful thing in the marketplace isn't it... ?

M-Net didn't respond to media enquiries. MultiChoice, which has been testing its own VOD service with the working title of Box Office since the end of last year, says "MultiChoice welcomes competition in the pay TV market. We believe competition is good for the industry and for viewer choice. In terms of our own VOD services, MultiChoice is planning a number of exciting new initiatives this year."

I ROFL'ed when I read this...

Quote

"MultiChoice welcomes competition in the pay TV market. We believe competition is good for the industry and for viewer choice. In terms of our own VOD services, MultiChoice is planning a number of exciting new initiatives this year."

What a lie... MultiChoice is known for its intolerance to competition. Let me guess, one of their "new initiatives" is likely even more DRM. Their so-called VOD offering is a load of codswallop anyhow.

Yup. This coming from a company that has never had any real competition and has basically a total monopoly on Pay TV, especially considering they have the sole rights to almost all sports broadcasts in SA.